The poetry-loving host of public radio’s The Writer’s Almanac collects favorite poems from the show and reads them with a number of contemporary poets.
Good Poems includes poems about lovers, children, failure, everyday life, death, and transcendence. It features the work of classic poets, such as Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and Robert Frost, as well as the work of contemporary greats such as Howard Nemerov, Charles Bukowski, Donald Hall, Billy Collins, Robert Bly, and Sharon Olds.
Some poems are wise, some are funny, some are soothing or heartwarming. All were chosen for their wit, frankness, passion, and, in Keillor's words, their “utter clarity in the face of everything else a person has to deal with at 7 a.m.”The poems are read by Keillor and a number of the poets including:
Garrison Keillor
Roy Blount, Jr.
Robert Bly
David Budbill
Hayden Carruth
Billy Collins
Stephen Dunn
Edward Field
Donald Hall
Jennifer Michael Hecht
Louis Jenkins
Galway Kinnell
Maxine Kumin
Orville Lund
Sharon Olds
Linda Pastan
Gerald Stern
Joyce Sutphen
Henry Taylor